The Ambulance: An Origin Story
by usa123
Summary: It takes a lot to keep the Avengers safe. After a battle lands Steve in the hospital, Tony sets out to design a fully-stocked, bulletproof vehicle that contains any equipment the team might need during a battle, as well as all possible supplies to deal with any injuries after the fact. This is the story of his trials designing the Ambulance. Entire team involved. Prequel to Ambush.


The full prompt from bucky_is_best is _"I can't get the ambulance [from Ambush] out of my head. Tony designed it in a fit of self-blame after someone got seriously injured in some crazy battle. He then goes on to lock himself in in the workshop to upgrade it whenever someone is injured and the ambulance wasn't able to help. It can now turn into a submarine (in case Steve decides to fall into the Potomac river again), it's got a built-in parachute (Clint, why the f*** did you drive it off the cliff, damn it?) and Tony swears it's totally space-proof (you planning on visiting Thor, Tony?) Also, Tony is now working on reducing its weight, Peter is strong but that thing practically tore him in half when he tried to catch it with webbing (Clint, try to avoid the cliff the next time, ok?). If all else fails, Thor was kind enough to put Asgardian alcohol in the glove compartment. (Steve is totally not taking advantage of that)"._  
Thanks for being so patient! I'm sorry it took me so long to finish this.

 **A/N: I own nothing. Please don't sue. Also, the fourth situation is a reference to The Losers. I don't own that either.**

* * *

 **1: Levitating blood bags**

The Ambulance wasn't something Tony had ever planned on inventing. In fact, until today, neither he nor the rest of the Avengers had recognized a need for one since Emergency Services was always in the vicinity of a battle. Even then, most of the time, all the Avengers needed from the paramedics were bandages or a handful of stitches.

But today was different.

Today, they'd definitely needed more than general first-aid from EMS. And today, the roads around the epicenter of the battle had been blocked by the villain of the week so the paramedics couldn't get through. The lack of healthy flyers also meant that none of them could fetch the life-saving equipment either.

And Steve had suffered because of it.

Tony had sat in the waiting room for three hours with no updates before he just couldn't _do_ it anymore. His hands were itching to work, to fix, to get his mind off the day, off his friend currently lying in the OR clinging to consciousness.

So he did.

He was tearing out the ghastly interior of the beat-up van he'd just purchased to make room for his new improvements when he was interrupted by a soft knock on the door to the lab. Knowing it was Pepper, he ignored the knock and hoped she'd catch the hint; he didn't have the time or emotional stability to talk to her right now.

The glass door slid open a split second later.

"Traitor," Tony mumbled, sparing a second to glare at the roof.

He buried his head back into the van as the clicking of heels against concrete grew closer. "Tony, we—"

"Busy right now, honey," he replied, scoring a long gouge in the carpet and wincing as it resembled the ones Dr. Cho was currently repairing in his teammate.

"You've been down here for three hours," Pepper stated as the clicking ceased.

 _Huh. It'd been that long?_

"A man's work is never done," he quipped, holding up a newly freed swath of carpet without ever looking back over his shoulder.

"Woman's work."

Tony shrugged, not that she could see, and returned to pulling up a particularly nasty square of stained and speckled carpet.

"I don't suppose you want to take a break." Though she phrased it as a suggestion, Tony could hear the underlying plea to her tone.

Something inside his chest shifted in empathy but he shoved his feelings back down and refocused on his work. He'd have time for _emotions_ later, after he was sure today's events couldn't ever happen again.

He flipped the switch on the mobile light he'd strapped to the roof and crawled further into the van. "I can't Pep. Not right now."

Then there was a soft hand on his ankle. "Tony, please. We're—"

"Don't say worried," Tony snapped as he dropped the box cutter, ripped off his goggles and rubbed at the bridge of his nose, trying desperately to abate the ache building behind his eyes. He was tired of everyone's sympathy, of everyone's mournful looks—he wasn't even the one in the OR missing half of his abdomen! "Cos I'm _really_ not the one we need to be concerned about right now."

He let his head drop down between his shoulders and focused on breathing, while Pepper made some sort of clamor behind him.

He caught a whiff of her perfume long before he felt her slide into place beside him.

"Steve's going to be fine," Pepper stated.

Tony rolled his head to the left to see his girlfriend's extremely concerned expression.

"He just got out of surgery," she continued, her eyes locking on to his. "The doctors say he's critical but stable."

Then, she reached out very slowly and laid her hand on his back; it was the first physical contact he'd made with anyone since the incident. He wanted to move away, to keep working, but was unable to pull away from Pepper's hand, unable to separate himself from the warmth and reassurance her touch offered.

"He always is," Tony mumbled as his brain finally convinced his body to shift back on his haunches.

Pepper nodded but the gesture didn't quite meet her eyes. "You know he's going to ask about you when he wakes up."

 _When. Not if._

Tony exhaled loudly. "Yeah, I know. He's idiotic like that."

This time, Pepper's smile was genuine. After huffing out a short laugh, she grabbed Tony's shoulders and pulled him back so they were both sitting against the side of the van. She wrapped her arm around his shoulder and he leaned in, drinking in her smell, her signs of life, and not giving a damn how pathetic that sounded.

They sat like that for a long few moments until Pepper spoke up again. "You need to see them."

 _The team._

He supposed he did. Honestly he was a little surprised no one had come down before this. The Avengers didn't usually abide by people's personal boundaries so well.

Tony surveyed the van, taking in the half-detached seats and the partially torn-up carpet, and the mental list of things he still had to do grew another four items.

As if reading his mind, Pepper reached over and rested her left hand on his. "This can wait."

Tony flipped his hand over and interlaced their fingers, able to feel her touch even through the thick glove.

"Okay," he reluctantly agreed.

* * *

Eighteen hours later, Steve drifted back into consciousness. His senses returned at a painfully slow rate but somewhere along the line he was able to comprehend that he was in the hospital. As he began to be able to differentiate sounds, one of furious and frantic tapping stood out from the rest.

Tony.

The soldier forced his eyes open to find the inventor sitting beside his bed, typing furiously on his phone.

"Hey," Steve rasped, swallowing hard to bring some moisture to his aching throat.

Tony looked up from his phone, his face uncharacteristically blank. " _Hey_?" he repeated in a tone dripping with...an emotion Steve's addled brain couldn't place. "That's all you have to say after I was literally holding your abdomen together? After you almost bled out in my hands? After you coded in the ambulance, the real one—not the one I'm designing."

The words were coming too quickly for Steve to understand. He reached up to rub at his aching forehead and hissed as the motion pulled on the IV in the back of his hand.

From what he'd been able to comprehend though, Tony was upset, maybe even angry. And it sounded like…those feelings were being directed at him? "Sorry?" he mumbled, just to be safe.

He had no trouble understanding Tony's curse-laden response.

"You're not supposed to apologize!" Stark exclaimed. "We need a better system so this doesn't happen in the first place!"

Suddenly a bright light was being shoved into Steve's face.

"I think I have the perfect solution."

As pain spiked through his skull, the soldier screwed his eyes closed and pulled away from the source of his agony.

"Sorry," Tony mumbled and the light disappeared. "It's farther away now."

Steve slowly opened his eyes again and struggled to focus on the device which was being held above his waist. "'s a van," he deduced after a moment.

"It's more than that! It will be fully equipped with all necessary first-aid utilities, including but not limited to enough blood to replace the waterfall you just left all over 4th Ave—in all our different types of course; drugs of all varieties, even those that will knock out you, Point Break and the Hulk; and all the wraps, splints, QuikClot, sutures and casts we might ever need."

That sounded…useful.

"'kay," was all Steve managed before something warm flooded his IV and he drifted back into unconsciousness.

* * *

Five days later, Tony had successfully added all the features he'd discussed with Steve to the Ambulance. He'd even gone one step further by fitting the Ambulance with a JARVIS uplink and installing protocols about how to drive a larger-than-average vehicle. Even though Tony had complete faith in his work, it was mutually agreed upon that a human would drive it as much as possible. Since the Avengers were still on shaky ground with the public after the Zemo incident, it would not reflect kindly on them if something happened while JARVIS was at the wheel.

Despite all that effort, Tony still hadn't solved the original problem: if roads were blocked, the Ambulance was sidelined. He was lamenting that very issue over drinks with Rhodey when his friend suggested Tony design a gauntlet (also powered by JARVIS) that could ferry items from the Ambulance to the team.

At first, Tony had been so in shock by the seemingly simple idea that he just stared at his friend, but then, after kissing Rhodey on the top of his head, he'd raced to the lab where he'd spent the night outfitting the Ambulance with just that feature.

As soon as Steve had been cleared for active duty again, Tony had pulled him into the lab where he was staging an elaborate proof-of-concept experiment. He'd positioned himself and Steve in the middle of the room then instructed his bots to set up barricades the Ambulance couldn't get through around them. Needless to say, both of them had grinned when the gauntlet appeared over the slabs of concrete, gripping a blood transfusion kit.

"This is a great idea," Steve enthused, turning to face Tony.

The inventor grinned widely and honestly at the praise, a combination that was few and far between.

"This isn't even the half of it," Tony continued, motioning for Steve to follow him through a gap in the far side of the barricades, so he could display the rest of the Ambulance's functionality. "I hope you have a while Cap cos there is a lot to show off."

* * *

 **2: Hearing aids**

From that mission forward, the "Ambulance with a capital 'A', guys, _c'mon_ ," was always in the vicinity of the battle. Fortunately, over two months later, it still hadn't been used in its original capacity (a fact for which Tony was still exceedingly grateful). Its main purpose these days was dispersing bandages, slings, and splints to the team right after a battle had ended.

Then came the fight against The Amazing Machinist, which generated more collateral damage than anyone could have predicted. In order to assist the strapped first responders, the Avengers had used the equipment in the Ambulance to tend to the people who weren't seriously injured, freeing up the EMS team to deal with those that were. It hadn't been designed as a publicity stunt but the pictures of the team lending a hand had been splashed across news stations for weeks and had gone a long way to help restore the public's trust in the team after the failed Accords.

For that reason, Tony doubled the amount of basic first-aid equipment in the Ambulance. It had been the only real change he'd made to the contents of the vehicle since its inception: every single thing in there was designed for dealing with the physical aftermath of a battle, just customized for the humans and supers of the team.

That all changed eighteen days later when the Avengers were called in to deal with a bomb threat in the downtown area. Clint, Natasha and Sam had been tasked with evacuating the surrounding buildings while the heavier hitters took on the enhanced baddies.

The archer had just reached the third floor of an apartment building when he heard a loud boom and was thrown into a wall by an awesome force.

An unknown amount of time later, he opened his eyes, gleaned he was lying on his stomach, that various parts of his body were aching, and that world was ringing.

Oh, and it was getting really, really warm.

Clint's gaze snapped up to find fire raging around him.

Well shit.

He hauled himself to his feet and scanned the burning room, looking for an exit.

Without warning, something grabbed his shoulder and he whirled around, pulling his gun in the process.

The yellow-clad man…a fireman…immediately threw up his hands.

Clint put his weapon down and apologized.

At least, he tried to. He wasn't sure if he could be heard over the roar of the flames. Besides, there was the ever-present possibility the explosion had blown out his hearing aids…which meant the backup pair in his suit were toast as well.

A hand waved in front of his face, bringing him back to the present. The fireman was gesturing at him, motioning to the left. Clint nodded and followed.

When they were outside, the man pulled off his mask and tried talking…at which point, Clint confirmed his hearing aids were dead as he heard nothing.

He squinted at the man, trying to read his lips, but he was too dazed by the explosion to be proficient.

He tried signing and, though the man's eyes widened in realization, the fireman shook his head, signaling he didn't understand.

Clint exhaled loudly, grabbed the sleeve of the man's jacket and tugged him through the crowd, following the flash of red hair. When his fellow assassin came into sight, he dropped the fireman's sleeve and held out his hand hopefully. Natasha shook her head and signed that the redundant pair of hearing aids she carried had been fried in an explosion on her side of the street. He scowled and possibly swore out loud from the smirk on the nearby woman's face.

He then realized Natasha was standing by a normal ambulance (little 'a', not Tony's version) and asked if she was okay. After a quick conversation where they both reassured the other they were fine, he pointed to the firefighter. No further explanation was required and she quickly began to translate the conversation between them, mostly about what Clint had seen leading up to the explosion and about what he could tell them about its origin.

Somewhere in the middle of the conversation, Steve walked up, saw Natasha translating and asked if Clint was alright in clunky sign language. Clint quickly signed that he was fine, and returned to conversing the firefighter through Natasha.

When he was done, Natasha motioned for him to turn around. Judging by the smirk on her face, he wasn't going to like what he found but he did as she instructed and found Yahrus, their new handler, talking to him a mile a minute.

Clint, who didn't particularly like the crass agent, just rolled his eyes, pointed to Steve, and headed off to the Ambulance (big 'A', their version) to get away from people in general.

He stayed in there until Steve and Natasha piled in, put the vehicle in gear, and drove back to the Tower.

* * *

Clint had intended to put a spare pair of hearing aids in the Ambulance as soon as he'd changed out of his uniform, but then Tony appeared and swept them all away to try the new Ethiopian restaurant that had opened down the block. After that, Clint had crashed as soon as his head hit the incredibly expensive but incredibly amazing pillowcase in his guest room at the Tower.

The next few days passed in the whirlwind that was the original six teammates staying at the Tower together and the replacement hearing aids slipped his mind entirely until his current set chirped that they were low on batteries.

He changed them out with the supplies he kept in the top drawer of the guest room (like a civilized person, not in the vents like Tony had originally thought) then located his back-up pair from the nightstand drawer (also like a normal person).

He was on his way to the garage when he received a text from Tony: _Where are u?_

Considering it was Stark's Tower and he wasn't using JARVIS to pinpoint his exact location, Clint took the time to respond. _Heading to the garage._

 _Meet you there_ , Tony replied, tacking on a self-satisfied smiley face.

Clint contemplated being worried but then decided against it—it took way too much time and energy and he really hadn't slept all that well after Rhodey had stopped by and they'd partied (responsibly) until last call. He shrugged, yawned, then punched the elevator button for the private garage.

Ten seconds later, the doors slid open to reveal Tony, who was pacing back and forth a few feet away.

"Here," Stark said, practically shoving a small box into Clint's hands, as soon as the archer had stepped out of the elevator.

"But I didn't get you anything, sweetheart," Clint quipped.

To his surprise, Tony didn't take the bait. "Just see if they fit."

Intrigued, Clint opened the box to find two grey hearing aids that were glowing faintly from two small blue pinpoints.

"What do they do?" he automatically asked.

"I assume you mean besides the obvious," Tony said in perfect deadpan. "Well, I know you have battery problems with the other ones so these should last longer. It's not quite arc technology but close to it. Also, there's a tiny bit of vibranium in them—apparently the Cat King doesn't hate you as much as you thought."

He paused for some sort of response from Clint but Barton just stood there, knowing Stark liked to save the big reveal for last.

Tony signed then added, "They should be shielded from minor disturbances now. Hopefully they don't go out as much."

Clint blinked as he repeated the sentence to himself to ensure he had really heard what Tony had said.

"What?" the billionaire asked, running a hand up and down his face hurriedly as if trying to discover what Clint was staring at.

"That's…really generous of you. Thanks man."

"Course you'll have to try them out before—" Tony was cut off by Clint pulling him in for a quick and extremely awkward hug. A split second later, Clint had returned to keeping at least two feet of space between them.

"So I take it you like them?"

Clint just nodded, too surprised by the fact that Tony had had time to design those hearing aids for him around his real job, Avengers trainings and PR outreach events for a declaration of how awesome that small improvement was going to be.

After enduring a series of questions from Tony about how they felt and instructions about how they could be adjusted with an uplink to his smartwatch, he headed back to his room, only realizing when he got there that he still hadn't left his back-up hearing aids in the van. Grumbling to himself, he took the elevator back to the garage where he opened his neatly labelled drawer in the Ambulance to find a glowing pair of new vibranium aids already there.

* * *

 **3: Wings**

After the hearing aid incident, things started piling into the Ambulance from all Avengers: a spare pair of pants for Bruce, Natasha's favorite post-battle sugary snacks, a screwdriver to adjust the plates in Bucky's arm, etc. The floodgates were really opened though after Rhodey questioned how well the Ambulance would handle harsh weather conditions.

Tony took his friend's concern as a personal challenge to ensure the Ambulance would be prepared for every possible condition; he even went so far as to ask the team with what they thought the tricked-out van should also be equipped.

"Wings," Clint stated during one such brainstorming session as he ripped the meat off another barbeque rib.

"That's ridiculous," Tony retorted, throwing his bone into the communal pile at the center of the table and reaching for another. "Most of us fly."

Clint brandished the rib in Tony's direction. "But some of us don't."

"We'll catch you!"

"I'm telling you, it needs wings," Clint muttered before returning to his dinner.

Tony looked over his shoulder at Bruce, who shrugged. " _Wings_ might be a little much," he conceded. Ignoring the indignant snort from Clint, the physicist continued, "But the idea isn't so bad. If we take roads out of the picture, it could get to places more quickly."

"JARVIS could pilot it," Rhodey spoke up.

Tony whirled around in his chair and glared at his longtime friend. "Whose side are you on?" he demanded.

"Science."

Tony sat there, desperately trying to think of a retort. When he came up empty, he switched tactics and grumbled, "You know you could have mentioned this earlier before we figured out the whole 'flying gauntlet' thing."

Rhodey shrugged. "There are still some places we won't be able to land the Ambulance, hence why we'd need a way to transport stuff from it to the ground."

"Did you just _hence_ me?"

"I believe I did, yes."

Tony stared at his friend for another long moment before he rolled his eyes in concession. "Fine. Wings it is."

* * *

Bruce ended up being right: there was no combination of "wings" that worked with the existing infrastructure of the van. So, much to Clint's disappointment, they were swapped out for repulsor hover technology.

This addition turned out to be useful two months later when someone broke into the Ambulance while the Avengers were otherwise engaged and installed a bomb that activated when the engine turned over. As luck would have it, it was Natasha's turn to drive the Ambulance back to the Tower but Bucky, who wanted to avoid the impending throng of reporters, hastily agreed to ride back with her. She'd allowed him to do so, as long as he drove.

They had made it only a few blocks before Natasha saw the soft flashing under the passenger side dash.

"Bomb," she said softly, levelly, with absolutely no inflection in her voice, as she calmly reached into her belt for a knife.

"Excuse you?" Bucky repeated, looking away from the road in front of him to stare down at her.

"I'll handle it. Just keep driving."

Bucky muttered a string of obscenities under his breath but returned his focus to the road. He reached out with his right hand and flicked on the radio. "Um guys, there's a bomb in the Ambulance."

"A what?" someone screeched.

"B-o-m-b," Bucky spelled out the word, putting his foot on the brake as the light in front of him turned yellow.

Suddenly a foot stomped on his, forcing the accelerator to the floor, and hands that weren't his began maneuvering the van around the braking cars. "It ticks faster when we slow down," Natasha explained, waiting until Bucky had acknowledged her to hand back control of the vehicle.

"It _what_?" Steve demanded.

"Someone's been watching too many reruns of _Speed_ ," Clint muttered and, while that might have sounded ignorant of the gravity of the situation, Natasha knew that was his way of processing what was happening.

"I'll keep the lights green in your direction. Get it back to the Tower and we can—"

"There's a chance we'll hit traffic anyway, Tony. We can't risk it. We need the wings."

"They're not fully tested yet."

"If they keep us up long enough for Natasha to disarm it, I can land it," Bucky replied.

Tony exhaled loudly then instructed, "Yellow button on the dash, third from the left."

"Buck—" Steve began but the rest of his sentence was lost as Bucky flicked off the comms.

"You ready?" he asked Natasha, this time without looking away from the road.

"Yup," she said, pulling the knife free of the device as Bucky pushed the button with his knuckle. The steering wheel popped further out of the dash, giving the vehicle up and down capabilities, seconds before Bucky and Natasha felt the repulsors hum to life. Bucky pulled back on the wheel and the Ambulance shot sharply into the air.

"Easy there," Natasha quipped as she scrambled back to her perch under the dashboard then flicked open her knife again. "Hold her steady."

"Yes ma'am," Bucky replied, his eyes never leaving the sky in front of him.

Natasha crouched down and carefully examined the device, following the wires past the flashing timer to the right side where they disappeared into plastic.

"How long?" Bucky asked but Natasha ignored him. She traced each wire individually back across the bomb then sliced through the red and green wires with twenty seconds to spare.

"Done," she announced, climbing back into the passenger's seat. "Back to the Tower," she commanded with a dramatic flourish of her hand.

"Are you sure?"

"You want to check yourself?"

Bucky shook his head. "No, I believe you."

He reached out and flipped the comms back on. Before he could speak, there was a flurry of questions from the team about their condition and whether they were okay and was the bomb still—

"We're fine," Bucky announced. "We'll be landing at the Tower in five." He turned the comms off again before anyone could ream him or Natasha out for the incredible risk they'd just taken.

* * *

Maria Hill was waiting on the helipad in a SHIELD-issue bomb suit when they touched down. As per protocol, they quickly exited the Ambulance before she detached the device, separated its components and stored them in their own bombproof evidence boxes.

Then, she stripped off the helmet and took a deep breath of fresh air.

"You know, if you wanted to see me, you could invite me out for drinks like a normal person," she quipped to Bucky and Natasha as she began stacking the boxes for the oncoming SHIELD convoy. "You don't always have to get yourselves into life-or-death situations."

"I will remember that for the next time," Natasha said somberly before grinning and giving Maria a hug. Bucky just waved at her from the distance, having reached his human contact limit for the day.

Not long after, the team spilled out of the elevator, having taken Maria's stripping off the bomb suit as a positive sign.

To Bucky's surprise, Tony pushed his way directly over to him. "How did it fly?" the inventor demanded.

The Winter Soldier took the change of subject in stride. "To be honest, the wheel pulls to the left."

Tony nodded furiously as he tapped away on his StarkPhone. "Anything else?"

"I think that covers it." Bucky then made a beeline for the elevator before he could get coerced into doing some sort of teambonding.

"And you said it didn't need wings," he heard Clint crow as he stepped inside and punched the button for the guest floor. The archer's exclamation was cut short by someone, presumably Natasha, swatting the back of his head.

Before Clint could fire off a retort, the elevator doors closed completely and Bucky grinned at the ensuing silence. With a pleasant beep, the elevator plunged downwards, sending him on his way to a nice long shower and his favorite set of post-battle fluffy clothes.

* * *

 **4: Submarine**

Now the air capabilities were now taken care of, the next logical upgrade was those for the sea—Scott and Tony had actually voted for "Space, the Final Frontier" instead but had both come to accept that the sea functionality would be more useful. Clint again threw the laws of physics into the wind by demanding the Ambulance turn into a submarine. To everyone's surprise, it was Scott who intervened with a long and drawn-out lecture about how that wasn't possible—of course, with a lot more scientific terms.

Fortunately nothing happened that required this immediate upgrade but the engineers decided it would be better to have those abilities sooner rather than later. After weeks of trials, the engineers' only viable solution was a deep-sea cousin of Redwing, built out of materials designed to survive underwater exposure and extreme pressure. It was connected to the van, which meant it could also be piloted by JARVIS, and had been affectionately nicknamed "the Octopus", after the ultra-strong yet "sticky" strands the bot could shoot on command. That last bit had been quite the project for Tony and Peter, as they worked to apply the science behind his webs to an underwater version, and they were rather proud of the final result.

"The Octopus would be perfect for underwater surveillance," Tony explained to the expanded Avengers and support staff—after all, any of them should be able to work all the assets of the Ambulance in an emergency situation. "It could also be used to retrieve a very important national icon that had disappeared into the American or haul the body of an injured Avenger back to land." He'd said the last bit with considerably more tact, but Bucky had still winced when the towing capabilities of the strands had been brought up.

He did later go up to Tony and mutter something about how great of an idea that was…before melding into the shadows. In all fairness, that last bit was a bit of an exaggeration on Tony's part but he was so shocked by Bucky's words that the Winter Soldier's disappearance had been a bit of a blur.

The Octopus was officially installed in the Ambulance within the week but (fortunately) the Avengers didn't cross a situation that required it for six more months. Even then, when they'd left for their mission on an early March day, they hadn't planned on using it.

A kind, concerned but anonymous citizen had reported seeing a bunch of boxes being unloaded at the warehouses around the Cape Charles Lighthouse in Virginia. As no deliveries had been scheduled, the local police had been dispatched and, once they discovered the giant glowing "Easter eggs from hell", as one cop put it, they'd called in federal assistance. The bomb squad had read the energy readouts and, when none of them recognized the make-up of the device, had called in the Avengers for support. So the team loaded the Ambulance into a quinjet SHIELD had provided then flown to Virginia.

They received an inflight update saying the police were clearing the area but, once on the ground, the Avengers still saw people huddled behind the barriers, apparently undeterred by the potentially lethal capabilities of the device.

Tony, Bruce, Natasha and Scott immediately headed to view the device from a safe distance while Steve, Clint, Bucky, and Sam coordinated with the feds.

Clint let Steve and Sam do most of the talking and resigned himself to scanning the crowds, having more than once encountered a perp coming back to examine the response to his work. This time, he honed in on a squinty-eyed gentleman wearing gloves.

"Excuse me, sir," the archer called, breaking away from the feds.

The man's eyes widened and he took off.

"Sam!" Clint cried as he hopped the barricade and sprinted after the man.

"Do you—" Steve's voice crackled over the comms.

"We got him!" Clint shouted as he whirled around a corner, catching a glimpse of Sam out of the corner of his eye. "You stick with the G-men."

"Keep us updated."

Clint followed the man to a beach, where he stopped suddenly, spun around to face his chasers, and held his hands in the air.

Clint screeched to a stop as he saw a small glowing device in the man's hand.

"What is that?" he asked, his left hand already reaching for his weapon.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," the man said, pushing down on the top of the device with his thumb. The glowing immediately ceased.

"What's going on guys?" Tony demanded.

"Did the Easter Egg just stop ticking?" Sam asked, from somewhere behind Clint. The archer's gaze never left the perpetrator but, from his best guess, Sam was less than ten feet away, which meant neither of them were in a position to rush the perp directly.

"Yeah, how did you—"

"We found the trigger."

"Tell them to stay away!" the man demanded, thumb lifting from the device ever so slightly. "This is on a dead man's switch. I see anyone approaching, I let go, the whole peninsula goes up!"

"You hear that?" Clint drolled into the comms, his light tone belying the seriousness of the situation.

"You guys call it," Steve said without hesitation. "We'll follow your lead."

Clint nodded at the perp. "They heard you. No one's coming. It's just the three of us."

The perp's face brightened before he quickly shut it down. "Good," he said soberly.

"What do you want?" Sam asked.

"I want to destroy every human in a two-hundred mile radius!" the man shouted, an evil grin sprouting on his face.

"Now why would you want to do that?"

"Careful, Hawkeye," Steve warned over the comms.

"Because! DC, Philly, Norfolk all need to go. All the useless establishments that are keeping us back, keeping our great nation from its full potential, they'd all be gone. We can rebuild from the bottom up and do it _right_!"

"You're talking about killing millions of people!" Sam protested.

"A small price to pay to pave the way to success for future generations."

"We're working on blocking the signal," Tony said over the comms. "Keep him talking."

"Is there any way we can get you to, I don't know, _not_ do this?" Clint asked.

"Offer me money, power, me anything I ask for!" was the man's snarky response.

Clint's patience for this man was running thin—he knew the longer they stood there and the longer the perp maintained control of the device, the more likely it was it would detonate, even if by accident.

Fortunately before he could snap a witty reply back, Sam was already speaking. "What would it take to keep you from detonating that bomb?"

The man shook his head. "Nothing." And, with a sweeping motion, he chucked the trigger behind him.

As soon as the device had left the man's hand, Clint was on the move, bypassing the man entirely, in pursuit of the trigger. He heard gunshots behind him and knew Sam had fired. From the ensuing groans, it'd been a good shot.

He refocused on the trigger seconds before it disappeared into the ocean and, without hesitation, sprinted in after it. He'd tracked the trajectory well enough that he had a fairly good idea of where it'd landed and quickly swam out to that spot, taking a big breath before diving in after it.

He wasn't more than a few feet deep when a small metal blur buzzed by him and shot out a white blur.

 _The Octopus!_

Clint dove deeper, following the little bot as deep as he could, but then, his lungs began to burn and he knew he couldn't continue. Praying the Octopus was as good as the engineers had pitched, Clint switched directions and headed for air.

As soon as his head cleared the water, he heard indistinct shouting and turned toward the shore to find Sam waving his arms wildly, his hands shaped into thumbs ups. Clint turned up his aids and only faintly able to hear Sam bellow, "Tony got it."

Sure enough, Clint heard a churning and the small red bot broke the surface a moment later. It immediately shot into the air, dragging the device, which had been webbed in a closed and disarmed position, behind it.

Clint grinned and began to swim for shore.

"Well done, team," he muttered into the comms as he pulled himself onto the shore and sprawled onto his back, his chest heaving.

He heard sirens and tilted his head back to see the EMTs arrive, one heading straight for the perp while the other made a beeline for the Avengers.

"I'm fine." Clint waved them off, sucked in a deep breath, then hauled himself to his feet. "Sam?" he asked, turning to his teammate.

The pararescue shook his head, signaling he hadn't received any injuries either. "Never better."

Before Clint could reply, Steve returned to the comms and ordered Clint and Sam to return to command so they could discuss their next plan of action.

"Duty calls," the archer quipped. He clapped Sam on the shoulder then led the way back to the Lighthouse where they handed over the device and its trigger to SHIELD's best before making it home in time to catch the start of the March Madness Final Four.

* * *

 **5: Weight Reduction**

The next upgrade the Ambulance got was different entirely. This one didn't involve adding new equipment to the Ambulance or tricking it out with a new feature; it was a complete redesign of the entire vehicle in order to make it lighter.

Why would the Avengers want to do this? Because Peter once dislocated his shoulder trying to catch the Ambulance.

The team had been battling a giant Jabba the Hut-like creature who exuded acid slime from every pore. As if that wasn't bad enough, he also left an acid trail behind him when he moved, which today was on a busy street in the center of town. The Ambulance door had been open in order to allow Bruce (until the Hulk was needed) to treat anyone who might have been burned by the slime.

Peter, who had been tasked with moving people out of Jabba's way, happened to be swinging by the Ambulance, when he looked down and a kid crawl into the back. In that same split second, he also noted Bruce was nowhere in sight.

"Hey kid!" Peter shouted, swinging back on his web in an attempt to get the boy's attention. "You can't be in there!" Peter was confident Tony had gone through all the necessary precautions to keep the Ambulance's contents from falling into the wrong hands—especially the armory which was biometrically accessible—but having a child in there was still a risk he wasn't comfortable taking.

When the kid still hadn't reappeared, Peter dropped to the ground and poked his head into the Ambulance.

He frowned at the toddler, who was sitting on the steel floor, and holding up a bright yellow bandaid that had fallen from its dispenser. "You have to go," Peter said, holding his arms out to the kid.

Suddenly, he heard something smack against the Ambulance's side and reacted, shooting out two webs that secured the kid to the side of the van. The kid didn't even have time to cry before the Ambulance was whipped into the air, pulled along by a long green tentacle.

Peter sprinted after it, shooting webs as quickly as he could to try to slow down the vehicle.

"I need some help!" he shouted into the comms as he continued firing at the Ambulance.

"Just let it go, Spidey," Iron Man ordered and, in the distance, Peter heard a faint zipping sound that kinda maybe was getting closer. He couldn't care about that now though—based on the lack of a response, he had to assume no one was around.

"Can't do that." While he webbed with one hand, Peter reached into his belt and pulled out a throwing star. He sent it spinning through the air, the razor-sharp edges tearing through the tentacle with ease.

Something screamed a few blocks away but Peter didn't so much as pause. Instead, he began spinning up a series of webs to slow the Ambulance's now free fall.

Unfortunately, he was so focused on the task at hand that he slipped on a pamphlet lying on the street. His concentration shifted and he was so focused on staying up right that he forgot to disconnect the web currently shooting out of his dispenser. In that instant, Spiderman went flying through the air after the Ambulance, the quick change of direction dislocating his shoulder.

He cried out, immediately releasing his right web while using his left to stop his motion. Once he was hanging from the side of the building, he continued firing with his left bracelet to bring the Ambulance to a complete stop a few feet above the ground.

"What the hell, Spidey! The Ambulance is not important," Iron Man shouted.

Grimacing against the pain in his shoulder, Peter slid down his web and stumbled over to the Ambulance, where the kid was bawling for all he was worth.

"Hey there little guy," Peter said, freeing the kid from the webbing with his left hand then pulling him into his chest. He tried to bring his right arm around but even the slightest motion sent knives stabbing through his shoulder, so he settled for laying his chin on the child's head. "You're all right."

He heard a clink and twisted sharply, tucking the kid behind him while holding up his left wrist to protect them.

"It's just me, kid," Iron Man intoned.

Peter blinked, belatedly recognizing who he almost shot, then nodded and turned back to the kid. "I vote we leave the Ambulance locked if no one is using it," he deadpanned, hissing as pins and needles shot through his arm.

Iron Man chuckled, then reached out a hand. At the sight of the shiny armor, the toddler immediately stopped bawling and made a grabbing motion for Tony's suit.

"I think he likes you," Peter grinned and, if he wasn't mistaken, the faceplate actually grimaced.

"You're good holding him, right?" Tony didn't wait for Peter to nod before continuing, "Great. Let's go get your shoulder looked at."

"What about him?" Peter said, tilting his chin at the kid.

"Until we find his parents, he's coming with us." With a chink, the faceplate popped open to reveal Tony grinning maniacally. "Welcome to parenting Peter."

* * *

 **6: Manual Override**

Even after all these upgrades, nothing ended up in the Ambulance for Tony besides a few bags of his blood. This was because, as he said repeatedly, everything he needed could be taken care of by JARVIS, including but not limited to piloting him home if he lost consciousness, getting out of the suit when it was bent, broken or dented, or acquiring whatever else he might need.

Steve had frowned greatly when he'd heard this but, since Tony refused to budge on the issue, he'd been forced to accept it. He had though, convinced Tony (through Bruce) to install more shock absorbers in the suit to soften any impact.

Tony grudgingly admitted later on that that was a pretty decent idea. He followed that one up with a scanner on his chest that responded to the Avengers' biometrics and would trigger the disassembly mechanism, should a situation arise where JARVIS was out of commission.

Given how much today's criminals loved their EMPs, it wasn't long before the suit was sent hurtling to the ground, deactivated and unresponsive. Fortunately the shock absorbers kicked in so Tony was only bruised and battered instead of cut in half, but the way he landed had crushed the override.

He forced himself to stay calm, to not panic, despite the suit threatening to close in on itself and the pain shooting up his left shin. He tried yelling but that only resulted in his ears screaming for mercy, so he resorted to tapping out a message in Morse code on the inside of his glove. The gist of it was, the suit was too damaged on the left side for even Steve or Thor to bodily rip open. All they could do take him to the Ambulance and drive carefully back to Stark Tower where JARVIS where the bots would remove the suit as best they could.

Fortunately, for once, the team did as they were asked and, ninety-six minutes later, Tony was finally free of the suit.

Despite the shock absorbers, he'd still managed to break his tibia and was on crutches for the foreseeable future. This did not improve his mood at all so, as soon as he'd been cleared, Happy drove him back to The Tower and stayed with him (despite his wishes) until Pepper's plane landed.

If he was being honest, the pain in his leg wasn't half bad. It was the itching that began around the ankle and was unreachable through the thick plaster that was driving him crazy. That was what woke him up the next morning at an unreasonable hour and, not wanting to wake Pepper, he headed to the kitchen...to find the team gathered around the table which was filled with a variety of papers.

They stopped talking as soon as Tony walked into view and Sam had the audacity to swipe the pages into a pile and cross his forearms over them.

Betrayal burned in his system but Tony kept a smile on his face as he hobbled over to them.

"What are you all doing up so early? Did I miss a call?"

For a second, everyone was quiet. Then Steve's expression fell. "We might as well just tell him," he groaned, holding out his hands for the papers.

Sam scowled at Tony then handed them over. "You're seriously killing me man, I hope you know that."

"No, it's okay," Tony said around the lump closing in his throat. "I'll go."

Suddenly, Rhodey was on his feet, blocking Tony's way to the door. "I think you want to see this," he said levelly.

Tony's anger slid back a notch at Rhodey's endorsement. He trusted the man very literally with his life, had for years, and the Colonel had never done anything to betray that trust.

He spun on his good leg to face the rest of the team. "What is it?" Tony asked mechanically.

"It's a release mechanism for your suit," Steve said, holding out a drawing. "I've been watching the bots take it off of you and these are the places they attach. We want to build a tool that will help us take off your suit in case JARVIS goes down."

"You know the suit has an override for your biometrics."

"That didn't work yesterday," Bruce spoke up. "This device would be a manual, manual override, guaranteed to work if all power goes out."

Tony stared at the design, at the spidery tool that looked like a cross between a cranium massager and DUM-E's claw.

"And just who did you want to build this?"

Steve blinked. "Us. It was going to be our gift to you. To thank you for all the improvements you've made to the Ambulance on our behalves."

Tony stared at the group of people gathered around his table and did some blinking of his own—damn painkillers.

"That's…completely unnecessary."

"Just let them do it, Tones," Rhodey muttered over his shoulder. "It'd be good for you to accept a gift for once."

And so, with a shrug, Tony did.

* * *

When they revealed The Claw of Life to Tony two weeks later, the device came with a small board with a "Lives Saved" header and a ton of tally marks on it.

"What's this?" Tony asked.

"It's a board that reads 'Lives saved'," Clint replied. Before Tony could make a rather inappropriate gesture over his shoulder, he heard a mild collision then an undignified squawk from Hawkeye.

"That's too hard!" the archer shouted, dancing into Tony's sightline and rubbing the back of his head.

"We've been keeping this for a while," Steve began, after shooting Hawkeye and Natasha an umimpressed look. The Widow just shrugged and readjusted her stance. "We weren't sure when to give it to you."

Tony scanned the board, counting at least ninety tallies of varying thickness, angles, and pen colors. "That's a lot of lives, even for us."

"I think you misunderstand," Thor said, stepping forward so he was in Tony's line of sight as well. "These are not lives we have saved, they are lives _you_ have."

Tony looked around in confusion. "We're a team. We don't keep—"

"What the rest of them are trying to say—" Sam began, pushing his way through the superheroes, "—is that these are the lives you've saved with the Ambulance. One of us, sure, but also any time we've used this equipment to help someone else."

Tony stared at the board, an unfamiliar sensation building behind his nose and eyes. "I don't know what to say," he finally stated, as the building pressure began to burn.

"I'm pretty sure now is the wrong time to make sure Jarvis recorded that," Clint muttered with a quick look over his shoulder at Natasha. This time, it was Sam who gave Hawkeye a disapproving look.

"We really are grateful for all your time and effort with the Ambulance," Natasha said, laying her hand gently on his shoulder. "And you deserve every bit of credit for helping those people."

Tony stared at the board for a long moment, counting then recounting the tallies to check his math. "But you already got me something," he finally said.

The team broke out into laughter—though it wasn't cruel and haughty, as many laughs on Tony's behalf usually were.

"When was the last time you stopped at just one adjustment, one favor, one improvement?" Natasha asked.

They waited a moment before Tony conceded their point with a halfhearted shrug of his shoulder.

"Besides, you ruined your original surprise by walking into the kitchen so we had to come up with something else."

It took Tony a moment but he was able to grind out a "Thanks guys," around a different sort of lump in his throat.

"Anytime," Clint said, clapping Tony on the shoulder. "Now, go put the board in the Ambulance. There's some indecision about where it would fit best. _I_ think it should go next to the blood bank, Natasha thinks…"

By that time, they'd trailed out of earshot. Tony took another look at the Claw before grinning widely and hurrying to catch up…well, as fast as he could in his boot.

* * *

 **Bonus: Asgardian Mead**

"I'm fine," Steve mumbled as Thor helped him lie down on the stretcher in the back of the Ambulance. "Just…bruises."

"We'll be the judge of that," Bucky said, hurriedly running his hands over his friend's head, neck then torso. "No broken bones," he finally declared, moving on to palpating Steve's abdomen for any signs of internal bleeding. "No bleeds either," he added after a moment.

"Told you," Steve hissed out, as his lead lolled to one side.

"You still need to go to the medbay."

Steve actually pouted, though the effect was somewhat ruined by his swollen cheek. "That'sa little unnec'sary, doncha think?"

"No," the team said in unison.

Steve's scowl deepened.

Almost instantaneously Thor's face brightened. "I think I have something that might help." He disappeared into the front of the Ambulance, rummaged around for a minute, then came back with a flask.

"Issat?" Steve asked and the demigod nodded. "Asgard's finest mead."

Thor rested his hand behind Steve's head and, with Bucky's assistance, helped the supersoldier drink a fair bit.

"'sgood," Steve mumbled, coughing as the harsh liquor assaulted his scratchy throat. But then, as quickly as the pain came, it began to dissipate and Steve lost the sensation of being in touch with the ground.

"That's the spirit," Thor said, taking a small swig for himself. He heard the driver's door open and looked up to see Natasha sliding into the driver's seat. "To SHIELD, I believe," Thor instructed as he and Bucky dropped into the hideaway seats alongside the stretcher.

This time, Steve didn't protest, happily pain-free under the influence of the Asgardian "cough medicine".

* * *

 **This fic was a little different than my usual stuff because it bounces around so much between sections and had a lot of backstory to fill in. It was a blast to write though so I hope you all enjoyed!**

 **Thanks for reading!**


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